1

Given the well-documented practice of those in authority during the immediate aftermath of the collision to downplay its seriousness 1, how aware a Third Class passenger on the Titanic was of what had happened greatly depended on where he or she was quartered. Single women and families with children were quartered in the extreme after end of the stern (Passenger Occupancy Table below) from D Deck down to G, far from the forward end of the bow on the starboard side of the ship where the collision occurred. For these passengers, aside from the initial jolt (which was noticed by some but by no means all), the only direct evidence of the event were the ship’s engines being shut off within a matter of minutes of the collision (Beesley, 1912: 28). It is quite probable that many Third Class women and families in the after quarters did not notice anything and slept well after midnight before having an inkling of being in danger.

In sharp contrast, the nearly 440 Third Class passengers residing in the forward quarters—overwhelmingly single men, along with a relatively small number of childless couples (Passenger Occupancy Table below)--there was considerably more awareness early on as to both the nature and the magnitude of the accident. This would have been especially true of men quartered on the starboard side in the open berths on G Deck and the cabins on F Deck where water from the accident entered directly.

Passenger Occupancy Table 2

The Third Class survivors Carl Jansson and Bernt Johannesen are typical of several men who survived who were in the forward quarters and who in later accounts reported quickly comprehending the significance of what had occurred simply because water was filling their quarters. The former is quoted as having said:

And Bernt Johannesen is cited as saying:

For those in the forward quarters without first-hand experience of the accident, the evidence no doubt came quickly enough from those in the vicinity who had seen the water coming in or themselves had heard from one who had. There are, for instance, a number of references in first-hand accounts to a large group of ‘firemen’ (or ‘stokers’) appearing on the Boat Deck very early on (e.g., Gracie, 1913, in Winocour, 1960: 175-6)3. Being employed far below, in the boiler rooms at the forward end and thus being not only experienced with ships, but also having seen the water literally rushing in, these firemen clearly understood very soon the seriousness of the situation and immediately headed to the upper decks. They, and crew members like them, of course communicated their understanding of things to nearby passengers in the forward quarters, so that the information rapidly spread The Third Class passenger Daniel Buckley4 testified exactly to just such a process:

Within roughly one half hour of the accident, then, we can infer that the information had already reached a critical mass of the Third Class passengers in the forward quarters that the ship was taking in water. Driven by fear, and in the case of those whose quarters cabins are literally flooded by necessity, hundreds of men deep down on E, F and G Decks at the forward end of the ship now gather up as best they can their belongings, and begin a journey, in the depths of the ship, the near length of the Titanic from bow to stern. This, even as right above them on the forward Boat Deck lifeboats are being prepared, eventually to be loaded almost exclusively with First Class passengers and their servants. The present piece is an investigation into what is known about this journey, in the hope of shedding some light on the general treatment of the Third Class passengers by the ship’s authorities. 5

As suggested by the title of this piece, the journey proved a fatal one. The men—some 350 to 400 of them6—went almost the entire way along the working alleyway known as ‘Scotland Road’ that ran along the port side of E Deck. The journey was not completed probably for all of them until roughly 1:00AM. It ended in a deadly cul de sac. Virtually none of the Third Class men who went back to the stern from their front quarters were ever rescued. Of 420 men in the forward quarters only 56 survived. Many, if not all of the survivors most likely went immediately up to the forward Boat Deck, never taking the journey at all. The majority of the men who did take the journey, once it was over apparently waited in Third Class public spaces in the stern, many of them emerging only at the last moments before the ship sank, part of a mass of people who rushed to the after Poop Deck in a desperate attempt to extend their lives. Some unknown number of the men made it up to the after Well Deck beginning at 12:30AM to 1:00AM or so where they were detained, their access to the Boat Deck restricted (Abelseth, A.; Dillon, B.: 3828-55). These men were akin to spectators of the rescue, watching the lifeboats being launched from the after Boat Deck. Ultimately, they joined the mass of people who huddled together at the extreme rear of the Poop Deck as the ship finally sank bow-first into the North Atlantic. As we shall see, there may also have been some unknown number of the Third Class men who were led from Scotland down to the Third Class dining rooms on F Deck, roughly amidship. If so, they and any other passengers who collected there, may never have made it out from the stern of the Titanic at all, the ship serving in the end as their under water mausoleum.

2

Following British Board of Trade regulations, in case of an emergency there were designed routes by which passengers from each of the classes, respectively, were assured access to the lifeboats launched from the Boat Deck of the Titanic. In the testimony of Edward Wilding—a designer of both the Olympic and the Titanic--before the Parliamentary inquiry, there is a clear delineation of these routes. Wilding ‘s testimony is distilled in the form of a list in Appendix 1.

According to Wilding, the Third Class men at the forward end of the ship were intended to go in any of 3 ways up to the forward Boat Deck, where there were 6 standard lifeboats, 2 smaller emergency boats, and four collapsibles. There was an ‘outside route’ (#12), which involved the climbing of a series of ladders from the lower decks to the forward Well Deck, from there entering the front of the Bridge Deck, and then climbing one of two ladders up to the extreme forward end of the Boat Deck. Third Class passengers generally were free to go to the forward Well Deck (the ‘Third Class Open Space’), but under normal circumstances they would not have been permitted to proceed from there to the Bridge Deck and so on.

The other two were ‘inside routes’ off Scotland Road on E Deck. Each led up to First Class areas on D Deck, from there to the First Class ‘grand staircase’ and up the latter directly to the forward Boat Deck. One of these routes (#13) required the Third Class men to enter an ‘emergency door’ leading up to the forward First Class entrance on D Deck. The other (#14) corresponds to another route mentioned by Wilding (#5) designed for those in the First Class quartered relatively toward the stern on the starboard side of E Deck. It required the Third Class men to go farther aft on Scotland Road, to the so-called ‘steward’s stairway’ and from there again up to D Deck to the grand staircase. Both of the exits off Scotland Road in these last two routes were out of bounds to Third Class passengers in usual circumstances, and for that reason most of the men would not have been liable to take them, and would not have known where each led in any case..

Two things become clear from Wilding’s testimony. In order for the hundreds of men from the front quarters to have reached the forward Boat Deck, as they were intended to do in an emergency, they would have had to have been guided by those in authority through areas of the ship from which they were accustomed to being restricted, and with which they were therefore unfamiliar. Secondly, however, we can infer that had they been expeditiously guided by stewards along these 3 designed routes, it was logistically quite possible for large numbers of the men in the forward quarters to have made it up to the forward Boat Deck in time to have been loaded into the lifeboats launched from there beginning as early as 12:25 and as late as 12:45AM (Appendix 2).

The fact is, of course, that for whatever reason, and whether justified or not, no such rescue effort was made. There are numerous detailed and highly credible accounts of the loading of the First Class passengers into lifeboats on the forward Boat Deck (e.g., Gracie, 1913: 173-86; 225-48). It is, after all, the ‘stuff’ of the popular story of the Titanic. In none of these accounts is there so much as a suggestion that either prior to or during the launching of the forward lifeboats, any major contingent of Third Class men were guided up to the Boat Deck, via either the forward Well Deck or, certainly, the grand staircase. Actually, other than the occasional ‘Frenchman’ or ‘Italian’ jumping into one boat or another there are no allusions to Third Class men on the forward Boat Deck during this period at all. With one weak exception (Albert Pearcey), who we will touch upon below, no stewards or any others from the crew claimed to have directed Third Class men along one of these routes either. Nor have any surviving men reported being directed in this way. And, indeed, there were virtually no men (or women) from the Third Class loaded into the forward lifeboats;7 even those launched from the starboard side roughly half of whose occupants (among passengers) were men (Appendix 2).

There is an indication (but admittedly little more than an indication) that some Third Class men, rather than being guided to the forward Boat Deck, were to the contrary detained on the forward Well Deck. This is implied by some testimony of the AB, John Poingdestre at the British inquiry. He told of an odd scene he’d observed within the first hour of the accident, while on his way to the forward Boat Deck from the forward Well Deck. He is being questioned here by Butler Aspinall:

What are we to make of this? We can be fairly sure these men, 50 to 100 of them according to Poingdestre, did not go from the forward Well Deck up to the Boat Deck while the forward lifeboats were being loaded and launched. Conceivably the men were detained on the Well Deck until the lifeboats were safely launched and were then allowed up to the forward Boat Deck. This seems unlikely because of the two late boats, Lifeboats 2 and 4, launched at 1:45 and 1:55AM respectively (Appendix 2). By the time the latter were launched the water filling the bow was reaching up to the forward Well Deck, the latter going under at around 2:05AM (Quinn, 1997: 38). It is hard to believe the Third Class men (or the stewards) would have remained on the open deck for so long (approximately an hour and a half) under these conditions. It is more likely that shortly after Poingdestre observed them, before the water had risen too high, and probably at the behest of the stewards, the men, still carrying their baggage, went back down into the ship to E Deck, where they joined the other men on the journey along Scotland Road to the stern of the ship.

Another matter bears remarking upon here. Second Officer Lightoller—the most senior officer to survive the accident—opened up something of a can of worms in testimony before the British inquiry related to the oft-repeated charge that the lifeboats launched from the forward Boat Deck were grossly under-loaded. It was set off by an exchange, in reference to Lifeboat 6, between him and the Solicitor-General—Sir John Simon. Lightoller refers vaguely to a plan to load Third Class men into the lifeboat once it was in the water through ‘gangway doors’ located on each either side of the ship at the level of E Deck abreast of the forward end of Scotland Road. These doors (as well as similar doors amidship and at the after end of the ship) opened up just above sea level and allowed entry into lifeboats with the use of portable gangways (B.: Wilding, 20474):

Shortly afterward, the Commissioner who headed the British inquiry, Lord Mersey (nJ e John Charles Bigham), questioned Lightoller more pointedly about this apparent effort early on to load Third Class men from E Deck into the lifeboats launched from the forward Boat Deck.

In addition, there is testimony by AB Archibald Jewel, and Third Officer Pitman, respectively (B.: 130-4; 15021-7), indicating that First Officer Murdoch, who was in charge of loading and launching lifeboats on the starboard side, had a plan of the same sort as Lightoller. It seems to have entailed picking up passengers off E Deck farther aft. Jewel, who was in charge of Lifeboat 7, testified that he was told by Murdoch ‘to stand by the gangway,’ which he took to mean the door off E Deck, amidship. Pitman who was in charge of Lifeboat 5 testified that Murdoch told him to ‘[k]eep handy to the after gangway,’ indicating a notion perhaps of rescuing Third Class women and children from E Deck at the stern.

Reading between the lines of all the testimony about these plans of Lightoller and Murdoch is the hard fact that they did not come to any fruition. We know this with a certainty because none of those in the lifeboats reported picking up any passengers from E Deck, once they were in the water. Apparently, no one laid down gangways or organized the Third Class men in the front quarters to enter these side-doors, and it ended at that. Lightoller concedes this point in an exchange with the Solicitor-General, where he once again is being pressed on the order he gave the boatswain to prepare the gangway door for the loading of passengers:

The upshot of the matter, however, is expressed most succinctly by the AB Thomas Jones, who was in charge of Lifeboat 8. When asked by Senator Newland at the American inquiry: "After you got down to the water’s edge, how do you account for the fact that more men were not put in, more passengers?" Jones answered: "If they had been down there we could have taken them (A)."

3

Once it was widely known among the hundreds of Third Class men in the front quarters that water was filling the lower decks in the bow, if the authorities were not going to direct them to the forward Boat Deck (or as just discussed through the 2 gangway doors at the forward end of E Deck), where was there, other than the stern, that these men could have gone? Even without prodding by the authorities, there would have been a strong inclination for the Third Class men in the forward quarters to head toward the stern for safety, although they might well have been better off to have done otherwise. It was obvious the water was coming in at the bow, and before long it was clear, from the tilt of the deck, that the ship was sinking from the bow. True Aristotelians, most of the men likely put their trust in their senses and headed aft. Besides, the route along Scotland Road was a familiar one by the end of the third day of the trip to the men in the front quarters, since it was the main thoroughfare leading to many of the Third Class public spaces, most notably the Third Class Dining Saloon. And in general this was the way one went when one socialized with the Third Class passengers at the after end of the ship. Moreover, many of the men, at a moment of such danger and crisis, no doubt had no other thought than of finding friends and love ones quartered in the stern. One can imagine some would have had to have been prevented from heading that way had there actually been a rescue effort directing them right up to the forward Boat Deck.

It should be noted that there were exceptional men from the forward quarters--Abelseth, Krekorian, Ryan and Jansson are all survivors who fit this description—who had the foresight to move in the hour or so after the accident more or less freely to the forward Boat Deck (H.: Passenger Lists & Biographies). Rather than going aft they most likely climbed outside ladders along the forward end of the Bridge Deck up to the Boat Deck (Appendix 1, Route #12). But these were a small barely-noticed minority, and almost to a man each of those who survived and who gave an account of what happened told afterward of acting against the will, however weakly expressed, of stewards who were on hand. The scene viewed by Poingdestre of men detained on the forward Well Deck, roughly at 12:30AM, as well as the well-known confrontation with stewards described by Buckley (A.), may be indications that eventually this limited freedom of movement was more overtly restricted by the authorities, but that is mere conjecture.

Like other aspects of what happened to the Third Class that evening, there are no first hand accounts of the journey itself along Scotland Road. Dead men do not, as they say, tell tales. What we have to rely upon instead are a mere handful of observations in testimony before the British inquiry. These were made, as it happens, by various crew members who encountered the men in the midst of their own personal journeys, or in two cases, testify to having helped direct the men along Scotland Road.

The earliest one of these observations is found in the testimony of the trimmer George Cavell.9 Cavell was in Boiler Room 4, immediately below G Deck toward the forward end of the ship, when the accident occurred. Soon thereafter the lights went out in the stokehold he’d entered. In this context there is the following exchange between him and the Solicitor-General at the British inquiry:

Under the examination of WD Harbinson, the lawyer representing Third Class passengers, Cavell testified specifically about the role of the authorities:

The stewards appear here to have encouraged, at the least, the natural inclination of the men to move toward the stern. They ‘[gave] then [Third Class passengers] instructions where to go to.’ As suggested above it does not seem that, generally speaking, the authorities acted to forcefully prevent the men from heading up to the forward Boat Deck. But in the immediate aftermath of the accident they seem to have assisted passengers to do otherwise than to go directly to where lifeboats were being prepared to be launched.

Two glimpses of the men on either end of their journey are found in the testimony to the British inquiry of a leading fireman, Charles Hendrickson (Mr. Rowlatt is the examiner here), who observed the Third Class passengers both back and forth between the Boat Deck and the engine room; the first time approximately at 12:30AM and the second perhaps a half hour to forty-five minutes later:

Hendrickson’s words describe a journey that over its course took on an insular existence, expressing itself to the outside observer as prosaic detachment: ‘they were walking about to and fro, some sitting on their luggage’. His last response—‘The only order I heard was when I went forward again and the word came along ‘…get up on deck’--leaves an impression that access to the Boat Deck could only come when one was out of the presence of these beings shuffling away from the living, like shades in the depths of the Titanic; an unwieldy crowd of men clogging the alleyway, gripping their every possession for dear life.

The insularity is related to the absolute immediacy of the men’s concerns; a self-defeating lack of perspective on what was happening. This is no better symbolized than by their hanging on to, and being weighed down by, their possessions throughout the journey. The observation that the Third Class passengers, particularly the men, were laden with baggage is almost universal in accounts of those who witnessed them, and is taken up by most secondary sources as well. Hendrickson’s testimony exemplifies this, including the wrinkle that once settled in the stern some of the men are described were seen ‘sitting on their luggage.’ The image of 300 to 400 men lugging their heavy baggage the length of the ship, as the Titanic is sinking, is both tragic and absurd. Instead of ‘re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’ the expression might well have been ‘worrying about ones baggage.’ Of course, all those making the trek knew that the ship had hit an iceberg, but how much did they really know beyond that? Perhaps, some of them reasoned that the purpose of going to the stern was in order to have a dry place for their things. Possibly, it was thought that the ship was going to continue to function and their journey was a matter of switching quarters; of moving in with the other Third Class passengers for the rest of the trip. Perhaps some (as may have been the case of Captain Smith too) believed another ship was coming to their rescue. And for many, perhaps, the fear was overwhelming. It obviated the need or desire for an ‘explanation’; to ask, why are we going toward the after end of the ship, any more than to ask why are we taking this cumbersome luggage with us. One thing it is safe to say is, the stewards, by allowing them to go aft with their possessions, were not preparing the men coming out of the forward quarters for rapid entry into lifeboats, since presumably only minimal accessories would be permitted in that case.

Lastly, we consider two relatively detailed descriptions of the role of the authorities in the journey of the Third Class men. These are found in the testimony before the British inquiry of two crew members, respectively Albert Pearcey, a pantry-man, and John Edward Hart, a Third Class bedroom steward, each of whom makes reference to an organized system by which Second and Third Class stewards handled these men. Pearcey, in an exchange with the Attorney-General--Sir Rufus Isaacs--testified in this regard as follows: